Saul Bellow Quotes
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I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
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Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
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A man is only as good as what he loves.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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"What do women want?" "They eat green salad and drink human blood."
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Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.
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A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
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I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.
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One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.
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When the striving ceases, there is life waiting as a gift.
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... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
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A person either creates or destroys. There is no neutrality.
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Conquered people tend to be witty.
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There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
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Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul.
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Love is the most potent cosmetic.
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O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.
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Art -- the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos -- art, not politics, is the remedy.
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She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.
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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
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I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others.
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An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.